Ritualistic use of religious music : a comparison between Old Testament and Psalms and Pedi Psalm-like songs of thanksgiving and lament

Abstract:

In both the culture of ancient Israel and that of the modern-day Pedi people of South Africa the medium of song plays a signifi-cant role in expressing personal and communal views on how life affects those born into it. In this article the author attempts to provide a descriptive and comparative assessment of the vari-ous types of psalms in the Old Testament Psalter vis-à-vis Pedi psalm-like songs. Such an investigation has hitherto not been at-tempted and this paper is meant to investigate the Pedi psalm-like texts as texts equivalent to the biblical psalms in quality, structure and content. I analyzed Pedi psalm-like songs search-ing for the African ethical values inherent in them. I also com-pared the Pedi psalm-like songs and the biblical psalms; search-ing for the similarities and differences; thus asserting the rele-vance of the psalms to the contemporary African peoples. This bi-disciplinary approach between music and theology is a grow-ing trend in African musicology and African theology. Inevita-bly, some of what I say is based on my own experience.

Psalm 47 is investigated intertextually with Psalms 46 and 48 in terms of their representation of space to determine to where Yahweh ascends in Psalm 47:6. An overview is also given of the theory of Critical Spatiality as ...

The values and norms of the Old Testament are not in themselves the proprium of Hebrew ethics, since every one of them also features in other ancient cultures such as Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece. Rather, the centre of ...

This is the first article in a series of two which investigate the meaning of Psalm 3. In this contribution, the syntax of the verbs and the aspects of time in Psalm 3 are analysed. This is correlated with a poetic analysis ...